


To Boston

by Lucky107



Series: A Red, Red Rose [10]
Category: Hell on Wheels (TV)
Genre: 19th Century, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, America, Domestic Violence, F/M, Family, Gen, Headcanon, Ireland, It Happened in Boston, Missing Scene, Murder, Poverty, Self-Destruction, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 08:25:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10272368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: “You take care’a your brother, understand?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shipping Up to Boston - Bobby Morganstein - 2011

Mickey McGinnes is seven years old the first time he sees _true_ evil in a man.

It's dawn and the cottage is quiet save for the sound of his mother's weeping.  Birds chirp loudly on the fence posts outside the window, but five-year-old Sean and the twin toddlers sleep right through it.  The final two of the eventually six McGinnes boys aren't yet even a thought.

He dresses clumsily in the dark and makes his way out into the front room where his mother has already stoked the hearth fire in the absence of her husband.  She sits and wallows in her sorrows alone, not saying a word as Mickey passes her by, and he doesn't ask.

Mr. McGinnes is gone most nights and young Mickey doesn't ask about that, either.

Mickey knows his father to be a hard-working man who built everything they have up from the ground.  He can't help but to be grateful for his father's giving him life - but it's more than that for Mickey.  As his father's oldest boy, he carries a unique sense of pride when he performs his father's morning chores on top of his own and consoling the weepy Mrs. McGinnes is _not_ one of his father's morning chores.

He hastily fetches two pails from the front door and heads out to milk the family's cow—one of the only remaining dairy cows left in the clachán since the potato fields took over.

It isn't until high morn and Mickey's about ready to return for breakfast that Mr. McGinnes stumbles down the old dirt road.  His clothes are disheveled and his face flushed a ruddy shade of pink; he's spent the night at the local public house again.  Mr. McGinnes doesn't acknowledge his boy as he passes him by, instead going straight for the cottage so as to lie down.

As soon as he's inside, Mrs. McGinnes raises her voice with him.

Mickey can't recall the exact words she used with him, but he recalls as clear as a bell that he was looking in through the window when his father struck his mother with an unforgiving hand.

\- - -

The fifth of June is a somber day for the McGinnes family.

All of the shouting has ceased indefinitely as friends and family gather to put Mr. McGinnes in the ground.  The funeral procession is led by fourteen-year-old Mickey McGinnes, the eldest of the boys and now the man of the house.  Sean lends a shoulder at the foot-end of the casket, but it's Mickey who now does the heavy lifting.

Nobody says a word as the community marches across town to the hillside where Mr. McGinnes is to be laid to rest.  The only sound for miles is the loud wailing of Mrs. McGinnes—an ugly tradition in Mickey's young mind.

As far as he's concerned, Mr. McGinnes will never again come home after gambling away the family's savings - and he will never again do it smelling of someone else's perfume.  Mr. McGinnes will never again ignore the six screaming brats he sired or force himself upon the wife he neglects - and he will never again mistreat them.

But Mr. McGinnes will never again come home.

Mickey is still too young and too naive to understand that Mrs. McGinnes has been left to raise six young children and run the farm all on her own.  No matter how heavy-handed her husband could be, he knew the business and that's a role he's simply not ready to inherit yet.

The younger boys flock around their mother, clinging to her skirt as the casket is laid and final words are spoken, and Mickey stands alone.

He can't even shed a tear for the man he called 'da'.

 

Once the funeral is over, everyone returns home to the McGinnes farmstead to work out the next order of proceedings—everyone except Mickey.

He's only fourteen, but with his father gone and the farm on the brink of collapse, he feels so much older.  His mother refuses to place the weight of unrealistic burdens on her baby boy, but Mickey has placed those burdens upon himself all the same.  He knows he needs to if he's going to help his family pull through.

So Mickey takes a detour on the way home, stopping in at the public house where his father spent the majority of his waking hours.

It's a curiosity thing, he supposes, because he has no intention to drink when he sees himself in.  But one of the louder patrons, a seafaring brother of his mother, greets him loud: "Well, if it ain't little Mister McGinnes!  C'mon an' pull up a chair, son."

Mickey does as he's told, sliding into a seat next to Uncle Shea.  The mixture of smells, whiskey and bile and three days' worth of sweat, reminds him of his father.

"Your da was a helluva fella," his uncle says, slapping Mickey plain across the back.  He nearly slams the boy right down onto the countertop with the force of the blow.  "Drinks're on me, squirt.  You oughta be proud of your ol' man - this place just ain't gonna be the same without 'im."

Uncle Shea's praise leaves Mickey feeling dirty because he's nothing like his old man.  He's spent years listening to his folks fighting on account of the time Mr. McGinnes spent here, in this very seat, and he grew up telling himself that he would never become that man.  For his mother's sake—for his own damn sake—he was _not_ his father.

But the praise sparks a sense of pride within the hollowness of Mickey's grief-torn heart and so he tosses back his first shot to a loud round of applause.

By the time Mickey makes it back home through streets that swim like a fancy oil landscape, it's the middle of the night.  He knows he really shouldn't be surprised to stumble in on his frightfully weepy mother waiting up on him, but he is.

"Oh, Michael," she says and Mickey can't tell if it's the grief or the booze that translates her concern into upset.  "Where've you _been_ —?"

"'round."

When his mother pulls him into a hug, a hug that should be hard for a boy Mickey's age to misconstrue, he's left feeling patronized.  He can't be the young boy his mother sees in him anymore, not now that his father's gone, so he pushes her away without a lick of sensitivity for recent events.

"Christ, ma, I's not a little kid anymore," he scorns and he doesn't even recognize his own voice.  "An' knock off that cryin'.  The ol' bastard's gone; we's all sleepin' better in our beds t'night."

\- - -

Mickey knows he doesn't have time to be stopping by the pub on his way home from the docks, but this afternoon marks a very special occasion: his first successful trade as the man of the house.

With a few extra coins burning a hole in his pocket and his kid brother tailing him in wide-eyed admiration, he's feeling pretty damn good about himself.  Pride trumps reason when he announces boldly, "Sit down, Sean.  Drinks're on me."

"But Mick, ma says—"

"I don't give a damn what ma says," Mickey insists, slapping down a couple of coins.  "I say we's did a fine job t'day an' so the drinks're on me."

Truth be told, though, if it weren't for Sean's unrelenting persistence and boyish charm Mickey would never have closed that deal.  The old broad down by the coast can be as stubborn as a mule; if it had been left up to Mickey, she would have been hustled out of her money.

He's right lucky that Sean was with him.

"You really oughta stay in school, Sean.  You's got somethin'," Mickey suggests over the first round.  By the seventh, he's slouched over his glass as he says, "We really oughta get you laid, brother."

Sean's reluctant; he's fifteen and he's drunk as a skunk.  He has no intention of moving from his seat until Mickey hauls him to his feet.  Rather than finding himself a regular whore to negotiate with, however, Mickey approaches one of the young and obviously preoccupied barmaids.

"Sweetheart," he says with a drunken slur.

The barmaid continues with her work, uninterested in his regular tomfoolery.  "Not now, Mr. McGinnes."

But Mickey's determined to impress his little brother and his inebriated mind doesn't process the tray of shot glasses the barmaid happens to be carrying.  He slips his arm around her waist and pulls her flush against him.  "Not for _me_ , lass, for me baby brother."  Mickey's smiling like it's all one big joke, but the way the glasses shatter at the barmaid's feet isn't funny at all.

In her own defense, she draws back her hand and slaps Mickey across the face.  "Mr. McGinnes—!"

Even in his drunken state, Mickey manages to catch the barmaid's tiny wrist before she can escape him and the sheer intensity of his grip frightens her.  From his back, he hears a meek, "Mick, don't—"

But it's too late.

One of the larger patrons swats Sean aside like a fly before he pulls Mickey off of the girl.  He doesn't waste any time becoming violent, but the rest is a blur.  All Sean knows is that when he comes to his senses, Mickey is straddling that man's chest on the barroom floor and choking him violently.

"Get off 'im!"  Sean hollers, pulling at his brother's hands until he can persuade Mickey to release the man.  "That's enough, Mickey!  You'll _kill_ him!"

When Mickey sits back on his heels, he reveals two black eyes and a broken nose.  "Who the fuck does he think he is?"

"Her _father_ , you idiot!"


	2. Chapter 2

Boston is bigger, dirtier, and more compact than Dublin.

It's cobblestone alleys and shuttered windows in a gaslight glow, while the booming of industry and billows of black smoke mask its echo of the foghorn.  Right off the boat Mickey feels like a fish out of water and that's a feeling that never really goes away.  America proves to be far uglier than he imagined; there are no streets lined with gold in Boston.

Many of the faces he passes by are hungry and dirty and scared.  He and Sean aren't much better off themselves.

Their first real dwelling is obtained after about two months in the street and it's a single room in the tenements.  There's barely a need for the place in the summer months because there's a better breeze sleeping in doorways by the coast and when winter comes, the paper-thin walls are no match for the cold.

Mickey finds work easily enough as a laborer, though a large portion of his pay is siphoned off the top by his contractor.  What little remains after rent is barely enough for bread.  Sean struggles, however, because he lacks Mickey's brawn and he never completed his education.

But he's smart.

With whatever left-over change can be scrounged at the week's end, Mickey takes Sean to view late-night boxing matches and gamble away their emergency rations.  Spectator sport was never really Sean's thing, but boy was the kid ever lucky—it took Mickey months to realise that Sean made his own luck.

"Ever think 'bout boxin', Mick?"  After a particularly long night ringside, Sean pops the question while counting his earnings.

"Nah," he says, dismissive of the idea.  Mickey's hands were needed elsewhere so that they might be able to afford a meal every now and then, but Sean's as persistent as ever.

"You'd be real good at it," he assures, a twinkle in his eye that suggests Sean isn't talking about skill.

That's how Mickey wound up with a small-time gig in select corners of Boston's underground boxing scene, the unlikely undefeated champion from the tenements.  With Sean's help he was earning more in the ring in one night than he was any given week under his contractor, so he kissed his laboring days goodbye.

He's got to give it to Sean: the boy's not only a numerical genius, but he's _clever_.

So far, nobody suspects a thing.

The night air is chilly at the dawn of their first spring in America, but Mickey's as giddy as a school girl when he counts his winnings.  "Can't believe it," he says boastfully, slapping his baby brother across the back in good spirit.  "Where should we stop first?"

" _Home_ ," Sean insists, rubbing his hands together in an effort to stay warm.  He doesn't have patience for Mickey's spontaneous expenditure when they barely have bread to eat.  "With this kinda money, we might actually be able to _afford_ us one."

"Or," Mickey suggests.  "We _could_ warm up in the company of some young lassies an' a bottle o' good whiskey."

 

Mickey thrives in the hubbub of a crowded pub; thick wafts of smoke, the rank stench of bile and sweat, and the ever prominent laughter of the patrons.  He's right at home in this sort of environment, feeding off of the livelihood of those around him—if Sean wasn't so persistent, Mickey could stay all night without repercussion.

Tonight there's no persistence.

Sean's had a couple of shots on Mickey, shots he desperately needed after agreeing to tag along in the first place, and he finds himself in the arms of young Patricia Fallowill.  She's a beautiful little thing, Sean guesses maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, and she takes an immediate shine to Sean's business aptitude.

It takes minutes for Mickey to lose himself in the crowd, leaving Sean alone to entertain Miss Fallowill with his knowledge of numbers.

"My father would just _love_ you," and she touches his chest.  "You might even be able to teach him a thing or two, the stubborn old goat.  He owns a shop just down the way... but I'm not so sure how he'd feel about taking lessons from someone so _young_.  Why, you're just a baby—"

"I's older than you—"

"I'm twenty-four," Patricia says matter-of-fact and Sean's face flushes a rosy shade of pink.

It takes less than an hour for the McGinnes boys to wrap up their visit to the pub and check themselves into a room where the beds have four bedposts and a backboard.  They've each got a woman on their hip, but they've had too much to drink to question the suggestion of renting one room.

The suggestion comes from Miss Katherine Emerson and who are they, inebriated and barely upright, to argue with a beautiful schoolteacher?

Only once everyone is sitting down - or, in Mickey's case, lounging across the bed with a gorgeous woman draped across himself - does the world finally stop spinning.

Sean gabs on, making a complete fool of himself with incomplete tall tales and jokes without punchlines, when the nearly lights-out Mickey catches a flash of movement in his peripheral.  If the lantern wasn't placed so directly behind Miss Fallowill so as to illuminate her pale, dainty hand against the dark fabric of Sean's slacks, Mickey never would have seen it—and for a minute he's not so sure he did.

"Sean?"  Mickey says loudly, rudely interrupting another one of Sean's tall tales.  "You mind takin' a walk?  Fetch these fine girls another bottle or two."

"You _sure_ we need 'nymore, brother?"

"Sure I's sure," Mickey insists, sitting up with an arm around Katherine's slender shoulders.  Skeptical of Mickey's intentions, Sean stands to gather his clothes and dress himself appropriately for the walk.  "Little place two doors down'll give ya the good stuff, just mention my name."

Pulling on his coat, Sean frowns.  "A'ight, Mick."

 

But Sean's only just out the door when he feels his pockets up for change and finds none.  First he checks his pants, then his coat and vest, but he's left without a penny.

He feels like an idiot.

With hurried steps, he heads back inside the sleazy establishment and right up the stairs to their room.  He hovers at the door for a moment, careful to ensure he's not interrupting anything, before he lets himself in.

The sight that greets him makes his blood run cold; Mickey McGinnes is poised over the half-undressed Patricia Fallowill with his hands around her neck.  There's no struggle left and, on the bed, poor Katherine is already gone.

"Mickey," Sean says, barely a whisper.  "What've ya done?"

\- - -

The younger boys crowd around Mickey in a mixture of curiosity and concern.

"You don't _really_ hafta go, do ya?"  Asks the youngest, eleven.  He clings to his big brother's hand, making it much more difficult for Mickey to lace his boots.  "Please don't go, Mickey—we need you _here_."

"He's right, brother," says the eldest, seventeen, as he clasps Mickey on the shoulder.  "What're we gonna do without ya?"

"Look after ma," Mickey says.  "An' get this place back in workin' order."

The truth is that Mickey doesn't have himself much of a choice in the matter.  After drunkenly beating the neighbor's son within an inch of his life over suspected crop theft - an allegation that has yet to be disproven - it was decided by the boy's father that banishment was an appropriate sentence.

An eye for an eye, as it were.

His boy would never again be able to work in the fields and so, too, should be the case for Mrs. McGinnes' boy.  But it was Mrs. McGinnes' idea to send Sean along.

Worn from countless years of overwork and the curse of sleepless nights, Mrs. McGinnes places a cold hand upon her son's boyish face and says, "You take care'a your brother, understand?  He needs you more than anythin' else if he's goin' to make a fresh start over there."

"But ma—"

With Mickey, it's simply not that easy.

"You can help him," she assures as she pulls Sean into a weak embrace.  "He _needs_ you, Sean."

\- - -

"Atta girl," Mickey says as he angles his torso just so that Katherine's limp feet don't touch the door frame.  He carries her out of the room in his arms as if she's fast asleep—a likely assumption given the amount of alcohol she's consumed tonight—but not so.  "Let's get ya home, girl."

Behind him Sean is shaking like a leaf, just trying to keep up with Mickey's quick pace while burdened by the weight of Patricia's lifeless body.

It feels like there's a locomotive thundering through his head.

They manage to get themselves - and the girls - out of the joint unseen and they make their way down to the harbor.  The thick fog coming in off the bay is advantageous.

"What're we gonna do?"  Sean asks, quiet as a mouse as Mickey lies Katherine to rest on a frosty bench.  "We can't just _leave_ 'em here... can we?"

As careful as he'd been with the late Katherine Emerson, he lifts Patricia out of Sean's arms and sits her up against the foot of the bench.  As much as he tries to craft a life-like scene of the women, the bruises around their pale necks are a dead giveaway.  "You go back to clean up," Mickey says.  "An' take this."

Mickey hands Sean a handgun.

"Mick—"

"Go," he insists, correcting Patricia's slouched posture.

Sean scurries off out of the gaslight glow of the harbor lights just before a booming voice hollers, "Halt!  This is the Boston Police!"

Not looking for any more trouble than he's already got, Mickey does as he's told and raises his hands.  "Evenin', sir."

"What are you doing there?"  The police officer asks, taking slow and careful steps.  Mickey doesn't move a muscle as the officer hones in on the dead women.

"Checkin' 'em for identification," Mickey says plainly, upholding his submission even when the officer's back is turned.  "Thought to meself, it's too cold to be spendin' the night here so scantily clad—then I saw the marks an' I figured someone oughta know 'em."

The police offers a nod, checking for vitals.  "And what were you doing here at this hour?"

"I live in the tenements 'ere," Mickey says, cocking a thumb in the direction of the Irish slum.  "Someone's been puttin' stones through me window in the dead of night, so I thought I might come down an' take a look.  Somethin' of a deterrent, if you will."

But just as the officer turns around to commend Mickey on his heartfelt lie and make an arrest, he's struck in the chest by a partially-silenced shot.

He collapses like a ton of bricks, revealing Sean and Mickey's smoldering gun.


End file.
